“What happened?” Marcus asked.
Hawk opened his hand and showed him the necklace.
Marcus recognized it immediately.
“Emily’s.”
“The boy saw her alive three nights ago.”
Marcus stared at Leo, then toward the grave.
“What do you need?”
Hawk rose.
“Everyone at the garage.”
Within twenty minutes, motorcycles moved through Ridgewood beneath a darkening sky. Leo rode inside Marcus’s truck, wrapped in a clean blanket and holding a cup of hot chocolate purchased from a gas station.
Hawk traveled ahead of them.
The silver necklace remained locked inside his fist.
At the Iron Saints’ garage, every conversation ended when Hawk entered. A dozen men stood among motorcycles, tool cabinets, and old photographs covering the walls.
Emily appeared in many of those pictures.
In one, she sat on Hawk’s shoulders during a charity ride. In another, she stood beside the riders after helping serve meals at a homeless shelter. The men in that room had watched her grow from a fearless child into a thoughtful nineteen-year-old woman.
Hawk placed the necklace on the scarred wooden table.
“She’s alive.”
Nobody questioned him.
He repeated Leo’s story, including the van, the warehouse, and the frightened captives. The riders listened without interruption.
When Hawk finished, Marcus leaned forward.
“Where do we begin?”
“With the accident.”
Hawk did not want them rushing blindly toward the harbor. If the crash had been staged, someone had access to official documents and enough influence to close the case quickly.
They needed evidence.
Hawk called Carl Donovan, an old acquaintance who supervised the county vehicle-storage yard. Carl owed Hawk a favor after the Iron Saints helped find his missing teenage son years earlier.